It is strange being a Stay-at-home-Dad. For instance a chant of "ihopeiwinatoaster, ihopeiwinatoaster" floating up the basement steps. My nearly seven [eight] (now nine) ((now ten)) [[eleven]] {twelve} year-old twin boys concoct, devise, arrange, invent, write, say, imagine and dream the damndest things. Things that make me wonder. Ideas and stories that I may think on for days after I encounter them. I'll share some here. They made me do this.
Essential. Childhood. Nonsense. Explained.

Friday, December 23, 2011

The LEGO Votive

It's not that hard, and, it's actually, sort of, fun:

Yeah, they are indeed LEGO votive candle holders. We made them last year for Gramma and she likes them. Here's all you need to have to make these: red and green LEGOs, patience, Crazy Glue, patience, a battery votive candle and patience.

It's pretty easy getting the kids to figure out out to make the votive, that's Z's on the left and N's on the right, the parameters are fairly explainable and the size is self-evident, however, what we didn't think about was the fact that we needed to glue them to make them permanent. Well, actually, that's not true, we knew we had to glue them we just didn't have a solid plan to make that happen. Basically we built them and then reverse-engineered them and then put them back together with the glue. This is where the patience comes into play, the kids will get antsy as you endeavor the impossible and you will go nearly crazy trying to figure out how the hell they put this together. All the while a child will be saying "that's not how I had it," or "this might be better."

Okay, maybe not my best Idea ever, but, you know what? They are pretty cool.

Marci's been sick so this evening she went to bed a little early and the boys and I sat in front of the fire eating apples and snickerdoodles, talking religion and philosophy as we are want to do. Actually it all started because we'd been singing carols earlier and they were asking about the words to some of the songs.

'Silent Night' came up and N asked about "...radiant beams from Thy Holy face, with the dawn of redeeming Grace."

"My," I said trying to buy some time. I did the best I could, the words aren't hard to explain, but the idea behind them is very complicated. Or so I thought. Basically, I went on and on, as I am want to do, blathering on about the physics of light and the many sides of Grace. When I finished N said:

"Jesus' face is so bright because He'll always love us. No matter what we do."

That about sums it up, I'll shut up now.

(This from the kid who thought we couldn't see God because The Pledge of Allegiance says "...one nation, under God, invisible with Justin for all." That took some explaining. I don't think he yet understands that the Pledge has nothing to do with Justin Beiber.)

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'